I just completed the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 campaign last night – my first time playing a COD game at all. Over the past few months I’ve heard mixed messages from people over MW3 having either a brilliant campaign or a terrible one. I got to wondering what makes a great shooter campaign.

Those of you who play first or third-person shooters; what are the moments that give you a little thrill or sense of satisfaction when you’re playing the story mode of a shooter?

If you’ve ever played Dead Space on a smartphone/iPad before, you’ll feel right at home playing Battlefield 3: Aftershock as the control system is practically identical. The left side of the screen controls your movement and the right side is used to aim your weapon with a button to fire. It really didn’t matter where I planted my grubby mitts on the screen as I was still able to control my character. The auto-aim feature also made it a lot easier to shoot the enemy soldiers. If you are playing whilst on the move, although FPS purist may balk at the idea, auto-aim does make the game a lot more playable. You don’t want to be screaming at the screen in public when you miss a headshot now, do you?

With no single-player campaign planned for the game, instead I was pitted against wave after wave of enemy soldiers in a fight for survival like the horde mode in Gears of War 2 and 3. All the fighting took place within the confines of a small courtyard in the Middle Eastern city of Tehran.

For the first few waves I was able to wander around shooting the enemy soldiers as soon as they appeared but pretty soon they got an intelligence upgrade and I had to start using cover to avoid being killed. For this point onwards my tactics involved strafing around pillars of buildings to escape the enemy bullets before hunkering down behind the barricades in the courtyard. Every so often I would peek out above my barricade to take pot shots at the enemy while they were reloading their weapons. This worked really well until I got flanked by a few of the enemy soldiers and died.

If you are expecting a mobile version of Battlefield 3 then you are going to be disappointed. Aftershock is a game developed specifically for mobile devices but set within the Battlefield universe. It’s all about short bursts of gameplay rather than long, drawn out single-player campaign levels. This type of gameplay suits me as I’m able to fit in quick game whilst commuting rather then having to pause a game mid-level. Perfect for the iPad, really.

Summary

Even at this early stage the graphics and control system in Battlefield 3: Aftershock are impressive. If you are looking for a quick FPS fix whilst out and about then Battlefield 3: Aftershock might just be the game for you.

Battlefield 3: Aftershock will be available for iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad later on this year.

RAGE follows the tried and tested first-person shooter formula with the vast majority of the first hour acting as a glorified training level. This gave me time to rigorously learn each of the core skills to survive. Run. Shoot. Cover. Reload. Shoot. RAGE was not a complicated game. The plot does its best to add intrigue and complexity to what is a classic id Software shooter. Not that I’m complaining as this is exactly what I wanted RAGE to be. A shooter.

Hey, I’m over here!

All of the enemies that I encountered early on in the game turned out to be very shouty mobile targets. At this point the entire existence of said enemies was to train me to blow their heads off. But they were very predictable with their shouting and attacks. By predicable I mean the instant I was spotted by an enemy they would scream something along the lines of “I’m going to kill you” and then try to kill me. This just alerted me to their presence, revealed their location and gave me a heads-up to find some sort of cover before getting shot. It also removed any semblance of apprehension and anxiety when entering large, open areas as I just waited for the yelling to start before finding cover. No shouting = safe.

After the verbal abusing, they proceeded to attack me in one of two ways; a suicide run straight for me or by taking pot shots from a distance. The occasional enemy did display some attack avoidance skills and would cheekily somersault over my bullets. Alas, that was the extent of their ingenuity as the remaining enemies continued to demonstrate the intelligence of lobotomised badgers. At least during the time I was playing the game there were no Jurassic Park ”clever girl” moments from any of the enemies.

One aspect of the game that was much improved from E3 2011 demo was the use of vehicles. They felt a lot more integrated into the fabric of the game. I started off with a crappy looking quad bike being my only way of getting round the huge world. It was pretty damn nippy too especially when I pressed the boost button. POWAR! There was also handy mini-map at the bottom of the screen complete with a glowly breadcrumb trail showing my route to the next mission checkpoint. Excellent. Riding around on the bike was a lot of fun and did make the thinly-veiled FedEx missions much easier to tolerate.

3, 2, 1….Clear

I did discover a few new niggles. When I ignored the game’s narrative and attempted to venture off the main path I got a verbal warning from a NPC before being killed instantly by a shot to the head. This felt a bit harsh considering all I was doing was wandering around admiring the scenery. But, no I was to be confined to the narrow corridor of plot. What is this, Final Fantasy XIII?

When I died later in the game, funnily enough as part of the plot this time, I was presented with a daft mini-game which involved a mixture of skill and quick reactions to use a defibrillator to shock my heart back to life. How well I performed determined how much of my pre-death health bar I retained courtesy of a shock to the chest.

The first time this mini-game popped up, I thought “What the hell is this?” Between dying instantly for not following the plot and now being forced to die as part of the plot, RAGE’s narrative feels like it’s over the place. If I died again by wandering off-plot, would the mini-game reappear?

I can’t say I was a fan of this mini-game at all. If you get shot too much you should die. That’s it, none of this resurrection bullshit. Game over man, game over!

Summary

RAGE is a fun game to play. If you can forgive dumb AI and the brutally unforgiving plot mechanics you’ll find yourself fighting for your life in a classic post-apocalyptic world where almost everyone wants to kill you. RAGE looks to be another great shooter from id Software.

RAGE is scheduled for release on the 7th Oct 2011 on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.